Although few citizens outside of the livestock industry have heard about this veterinary drug, ractopamine is set to become not only the source of public concern but also the trigger of another endless transatlantic trade dispute. After years of scientific and political deadlock, the Codex...

Emboldened by the Spitzenkandidaten process, the new European Commission emerges as the most political yet. The Commission asks EU citizens to judge its operation by its ability ‘to deliver solutions to the big issues that cannot be addressed by the Member States alone’. The Better...

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the economic, legal and public policy rationales for the application of taxes and other fiscal measures on health-related commodities. The motivation for such taxes has been more often linked to the fiscal revenues generated than to their potential...

At a time in which behavioural science has gained increasing attention for the design of population-wide health interventions, this chapter discusses its potential contributions to the prevention and control of Non-Communicable-Diseases (NCDs). Given the largely preventable nature of NCDs, any...

Nudge is a semantically multifarious concept that originates in Thaler and Sunstein's (2008) popular eponymous book. In one of its senses, it is a policy for redirecting an agent's choices by only slightly altering his choice conditions, in another sense, it is concerned with bounded rationality...

This chapter is the introduction to the book Nudge and the Law: A European Perspective. It sets the scene for an exploration of the legal implications of the emergent phenomenon of behaviourally informed intervention. More precisely, we focuses on the challenges and opportunities it may offer to...

In recent decades, governments across the world actively cooperated to harmonize and coordinate policies “behind the borders” through a variety of harmonization efforts at multilateral, as well as regional and bilateral, levels. These efforts have been dictated by the trade liberalization...

The European response to COVID-19 has revealed an inconvenient truth. Despite having integrated public health concerns across all its policies – be it agriculture, consumer protection, or security –, the Union cannot directly act to save people’s lives. Only member states can do so. Yet...

Europe has largely been absent from the US-dominated debate surrounding the introduction of nudge-type interventions in policy-making. Yet the European Union and some of its Member States are exploring the possibility of informing their policy action with behavioural insights. While a great deal...

This article examines what difference – if any – the renewed EU Better Regulation Agenda has made for the EU Commission in terms of its own accountability and policy outcomes. Emboldened by the Spitzenkandidaten process – which established for the first time a link between the outcome of...